Seeing what’s happening

I think Henry Porter understands what’s happening in Kashmir. “American intelligence estimates put the toll in the event of a full exchange of the two nuclear arsenals at 12 million dead with maybe seven million wounded — an instant slaughter unprecedented in the history of mankind. But despite the movement of missiles yesterday and the tests which took place in Pakistan over the weekend, the possibility of nuclear warfare still strikes the west as either remote or not really very important.”

The New York Times has finally got around to editorialising on the subject, about a week too late in my opinion. But what it says is sensible:  “At a time when the world is pleading for statesmanship, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India and Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan have irresponsibly escalated threats of war.”